"Women Making the Biggest Impact in the Hobby" Topic

A thought spurred during a discussion on professional wargaming at work today**, coinciding with International Women's Day – who are the women making the biggest impact on the hobby (or the profession) today? I have my thoughts, interested to hear yours.

** A couple of our young lady engineers have been instrumental in getting our "wargaming education" project off the ground; well done Lucy and Becky :)

My vote would be for Victoria Lamb, of Victoria Miniatures. Amazing work, and a wonderful company to deal with.

Annie the owner of Bad Squiddo is certainly up there on the Fantasy side.

Felicia Day and the folks at Geek & Sundry have certainly widened the audience.

Bad Squiddo Games owner Annie. Brilliant figures and all round great individual.

I would suggest Heather Blush, for completely revamping and adding to the interesting things to do at the HMGS cons. I have seen many more spouses and children since she added "Hobby University" to the menu.

Annie Norman of Bad Squiddo Games. She also has historical
miniatures. I have about a platoon of her female Russian
WWII soldiers.

Sue Barker of WRG and DBA fame.

Another vote for Annie Norman and Bad Squiddo Games – beautiful, realistic sculpts

Annie Norman and BSG for sure. One of the more original British companies with a fresh take on otherwise hackneyed subjects.

Another vote for Annie Norman at Bad Squiddo Games.

How about the woman making the biggest impact right here? Editor Gwen

On my hobby, my wife!

It would be nice if Annie would read her PMs occasionally. I think she owes us an apology…

Another vote for Heather Blush of HMGS.

The wives who haven't killed you guys

I think some of the wives in the hobby protest just to keep from letting on how relieved they are they got guys like us.

After all, they could have gotten:

Golfers
Politicians
Bass Fishermen
Musicians
Televangelists
Minstrels
Wastrels
Squanderers
Philanderers
Used car salesmen
Mugs
Pugs
Thugs
Nitwits
Et al

I'd also vote for Sue Barker. Polite, erudite and, back in the 70's, very willing to speak with teenage idiots at conventions, firing them with her own enthusiasms.

Sal White of Hasslefree

Teresa Gregory of Old Glory

Bev Krueger of The Last Square

Great idea for a poll. But it's interesting that with the poll inspired by International Women's Day, and a number of votes for Annie Norman as an influential woman in the hobby, that the TMP Editors chose remove Annie's post about International Women's Day earlier today as she comments here:
link

Annie at Bad Squiddo games

Bill, why was Annie's post deleated?

It looks like Twitter (and facebook) is on fire with very negative press about you and TMP for this. International Women's Day sounds like a nobel topic and her figures are first date excellent. What happened here?

No idea.

If I haven't met you in person, I have neither idea, nor interest in your gender. I have lived too long in too many places to assume because your name is "Bill", or whatever it is, that your name is indicative of your gender.

If I have met you in person, with a few very personal family exceptions, I may know your gender, but I really still don't care.

If you make a good product, I will buy it. If you write a good game, I will play it. If you play a good game, I will welcome you back to play again. If not, that is really a reflection of my preferences in products, games, and gaming.

Bill, why was Annie's post deleated?

As was explained to Annie at the time, TMP has a policy against non-advertisers posting "free shipping" promotions on our forum.

Nothing to do with International Women's Day. Note that we earlier published the Hobby News story about Women's History Month, but that was from an advertiser. TMP link

As the TMP FAQ states:

Can I announce that I'm having a sale?

Only if you are a TMP advertiser, sorry. Sales, discounts, promotions, special bundles – sorry, not allowed for non-advertisers.

TMP link

My wife

I understand what you are saying and I understand the rule. But considering the incredible amount of bad publicity for TMP on twitter, Facebook and other forums could this have been handled a bit differently?

There are a number of women with youtube channels who promote miniatures, boardgames and D&D. I don't know any by name but I would nominate them all!

For me it would be Annie from Bad Squiddo for making female figures that I am proud that my thirteen year old daughter wants to game with!!

But considering the incredible amount of bad publicity for TMP on twitter, Facebook and other forums could this have been handled a bit differently?

Not my fault that Annie is making a fool of herself. Hopefully, her apology will be as public as her previous posts.

Thank you so much for the lovely comments, someone linked me to over here, utterly humbling! There are lots of women making strides in the industry, I'm just one who chucks my face all over everything.

It's a hard industry to work in, so I am super thankful and cheered by anyone who does a "hey, that thing you do, we like it, keep doing it!" <3

--

Apologies for breaking the rules re the post. It's been an especially long week and I must have forgot the rest of the padding in the post as I was hoping it would turn into a general IWD discussion.

I also blindly didn't see it as a sale (again, need sleeps) as I was focussing on the whole "your own personalised fact with the stuff" special, which has meant me spending most the weekend writing out facts about cool women from history with each order – which although is extra work I didn't take into account, it's been really exciting finding out more things, as well as the excitement the second time around when people read them when the package arrives, Squeep!

But anywhom, point taken and I shant post here of that nature again.

--

Anyway, surely this thread should be getting back on topic?

I'd like to nominate Delaney King of Darkling Games. She's been around a long time and fought so many hardships, as well as being an outspoken advocate of LGBTQI+ issues and trying to kick the industry's ass to be better in that respect. She's an incredible sculptor, 2d artist and writer, and the stuff she is coming out with now makes me really excited.

(Annie, troublemaker)

Given the repeated urging from Bill for an apology, I'm sure we can expect an "apology accepted Annie, all is forgiven" post from him?
I'm sure it's what he'd expect…

Now that's how an apology should be made – well done, Annie, you definitely deserve those nominations.

Apology accepted, but it would be nice if the same message was posted to Twitter. After all, that is where the original error was made.

it would be nice if the same message was posted to Twitter.

What happened on Twitter is what happens on Twitter …

TwitterStorm – n 1. The opportunity for a large number of people who are angry with something to post their gripe in response to a post that shares the same subject, regardless of any relationship to the content of original post, with all the erudite, informative quality that fits in 140 charasters.*

* – While Twitter has been at 280 characters messages for a while, their own stats show that the Twits on the system by and large do not use that extra space. Apparently, their clientele lack thoughts that require more space.

Basically, facts and substance are not relevant. Most of the people who posted did not care about the issue to which they were "responding"; they just wanted to vent their old, unrelated bile at the current target.

Twitter is a great medium for short announcements of stats, possibly linked to further information. It was named after a short, shrill animal noise with the purpose of grabbing attention and causing a visceral response.

Basically, if someone Tweeted, "TMP just saved twelve children and fifteen puppies from a burning building." The likely first response would be "Yeah, their editor is a !"

And this is why I don't tweet.

I wanna buy eto a drink!!

A cheap one!

A vote for my wife. Because I am On disability, I am not allowed to drive so she will take me to Grand Haven, almost 40 minutes away from home, she will sit in our car. 4-4.5 hours later and then we go home. What a treasure.

Also Bev from Last Square is great to deal with.

For what I can see the only way women that have impacted the hobby. When my buddie's wife wouldn't let him come over to game. Because on the weekends he was spending more time with me than her !

Great post Annie.
Classy

Great post Annie.
Classy

Really? She trashed TMP unfairly to all of her Twitter followers, then only apologized on this topic. Seems the opposite of classy.

Unfortunately, retracting a Tweet that has spawned a TwitterStorm usually does no good.

The people who responded with bile don't care about the retraction and are likely to call the retractor a sell-out, stooge, or one of the other vile things they actually called people who don't agree with them in this particular TwitterStorm.

People who don't know anything other that what they saw in the TwitterStorm are unlikely to go back to it and read again. They are even less likely to put a retraction in context.

Nothing good generally comes from posting on Twitter … Never have and never will …

Really? She trashed TMP unfairly to all of her Twitter followers, then only apologized on this topic. Seems the opposite of classy.

I didn't see her tweet. I thought her apology above was classy.

I didn't see her tweet.

That is the issue the editor is bringing up.

You didn't see the Tweet, but you say the apology.
People on Twitter saw the Tweet, but not the apology.

Annie are you ok?

All that Annie tweeted was this
i.postimg.cc/pXWvvHHL/twet.png
I don't really see that as "trashing TMP"

I didn't see anything negative from Annie…some of the following comments on the Twitter thread clearly were, but her original comment was very moderate and reasonable.

So "Wow" twice does not imply emphasis and condescending disbelief? And writing "deleted my International Women's Day thread" instead of "delete my ad that violated the site's TOR" does not make an implication about motivation and behaviour of the site's management, let alone one that is incorrect?

Perhaps it does in your eyes…not in mine.